Regional
There is an annual one day regional conference, organised on alternate years by ourselves and by the South Lancashire Region.
The next one will take place on Saturday 13 May 2023, hosted by us in a new venue of Brockholes Nature Reserve Conference Centre. The theme is ‘Make it happen, make it matter‘ and full details of the of the event can be found here on the 2023 Conference page.
The last one was hosted by South Lancashire on 14 May 2022 with the theme Women Supporting Women – Together We Can!
The last one organised by us was on 11 May 2019 at the Preston Marriott Hotel – the theme #BreakingBarriers (information), the next two in 2020 (South Lancashire) and 2021 (ours) were both cancelled due to the pandemic.
In 2018 the conference took place on 12 May 2018 at The Ramada Plaza Hotel, Southport, hosted by South Lancashire.
The 2017 Regional Conference was held on 13 May 2017 at the Preston Marriott Hotel – hosted by ourselves – ‘Change ME for WE’. Full report and pictures are available on the Conference Report page.
For 2016, the event was hosted by South Lancashire at the Radission Blu Hotel in Liverpool, on Saturday 14 May 2016. The theme was ”Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”. Further information at https://sigbi.org/south-lancashire/joint-regional-conference/ or see our write-up and pictures.
National
(See – https://sigbi.org/conferences/)
Members of Northwest England & the Isle of Man Region are great travellers and are always keen to learn and socialise. Hence a jolly crowd is always to be seen at a Federation Conference whereever it may be – the 2014 Conference was held in Harrogate https://sigbi.org/harrogate2014/ ; and the 2015 Conference took place in Glasgow in November 2015. https://sigbi.org/glasgow2015/.
2016 found us in Malta, with the theme of “Engineering the Future”. https://sigbi.org/malta2016/.
It was the turn of Cardiff in October 2017, with the theme of “Step up, lead the way” https://sigbi.org/cardiff2017/.
For 2018 we supported the outgoing President Sue Biggs (a local lass from Burnley) at Liverpool with “Empower Today – Enable Tomorrow” – see https://sigbi.org/liverpool2018/.
In 2019 we considered the theme of President Sue Williams of “Think of It” at the Bournemouth International Conference Centre https://sigbi.org/bournemouth2019/.
For 2020 we should have been visiting Belfast but the Covid-19 pandemic put paid to that so instead we had a virtual event https://sigbi.org/belfast2020/. It was the same again in 2021 for Llandudno https://sigbi.org/llandudno2021/.
So in 2022 we again arranged to visit Belfast – and some of us made it in person this time. https://sigbi.org/belfast2022/
The programme of events and speakers at these events are always excellent and inspirational! Plus the food is usually good as well, not that we Soroptimists are the slightest bit interested in that …. 😉
Conferences allow us to meet up with friends we may only see rarely, with members of Friendship Link clubs or simply talk to other like-minded women and exchange ideas in a convivial atmosphere.